NSF Awards: 1821146
This video is in Spanish. Turn on captions (bottom right) to see English subtitles.
For school age children on the island of Puerto Rico, the 2017 back-to-back hurricane strikes of Irma and Maria were their first experiences with the tragedy of hurricanes in Puerto Rico. There has been much concern in the media and associated reader comments about the ability of the El Yunque rainforest in Puerto Rico to recover. These concerns reveal common misconceptions about the dynamics of forest ecosystems. Long-term research conducted by Luquillo ecologists paints a different picture. The rainforest is adapted to being struck by hurricanes on a regular basis. This video describes students’ experiences in the Luquillo Schoolyard Long-Term Ecological Research program after the hurricanes. Middle and high school students have been able to conduct first-hand investigations of the reaction of the rainforest to hurricane disturbance. They completed a damage assessment of a student study plot using the same protocols that Luquillo scientists used to assess the overall damage of the rainforest. Students have also developed their own oral histories of their experience with and resilience after Hurricane Maria. Other Schoolyard LTER experiences include Journey to El Yunque and Data Jam. With Journey to El Yunque, students model past hurricane disturbance and resilience. With Data Jam, students investigate the hurricanes in the context of past storm events. These experiences culminate with the annual Schoolyard Symposium in which students share the results of their research with fellow students and with scientists in the Luquillo Long-Term Ecological Research program. Engaging students in investigations of El Yunque resilience at different timescales and different perspectives will allow students to connect their learning about the rainforest to the current tragedy of their everyday life.
Steven McGee
President
Welcome to our video about the Schoolyard LTER program in Puerto Rico. If you don't know Spanish, you can turn on the English Closed Captioning to get subtitles. This video gives a small taste of the students' and teachers' resolve in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.
We would love to hear from others who are engaged in STEM outreach in Puerto Rico.
We would also love to hear from folks who are studying how to support students in engaging in authentic investigations of the natural world and supporting them in rich analyses of complex, long-term datasets.
Meriem Sadoun
Mayrelis Narváez Díaz
Project Coordinator
Students ' opportunity to work directly with Yunque scientists and the forest's natural spaces provide a unique experience of learning from the source. Students experiment with the collection of primary data, scientific research in processes and data management. A great experience for all of them.
La oportunidad de los estudiantes de trabajar directamente con los científicos del Yunque y los espacios naturales del bosque proveen una experiencia única de aprender desde la fuente. Los estudiantes experimentan con la recolección de datos primarios, investigaciones científicas en procesos y manejo de datos. En definitiva, una gran experiencia para ellos.
Gillian Puttick
Senior Scientist
The video shows how students can become engaged in something as simple (and often boring to students of this age!) as measuring tree diameter at breast height if it is embedded in a compelling context. In the Climate Lab project (https://www.manomet.org/project/climate-lab/) we also had students connect data they had collected with longer-term datasets. One of our goals was for them to "see" patterns in the long-term data, so we asked them to look first at a data subset, then a larger set so that what looked like noise at first became part of a pattern. With dramatic differences in before and after a hurricane, I wonder if the data will make patterns immediately obvious to students. I'm curious how the project balances the (valuable) time spent in the field with the time demands of learning prescribed content? That has been a challenge for us.
Steven McGee
President
Thanks, Gillian, for sharing info about your manomet project. It seems like we share very similar goals. Over the years, students have been collecting data about the demonstration plot in El Verde for about a decade prior to the hurricane. After the hurricane, we wanted to get the field trips back up and running as quickly as possible so that students could do the damage assessment using the same protocol that the scientists were using for the forest a whole. The teachers were dedicated to bring their students to El Verde, despite no electricity at their schools. These measurements have been added to the dataset and students can analyze the data and present their results at the annual Schoolyard Symposium. This work fits nicely into the Puerto Rican science standards, so teachers are able to justify the time spent since it is not just data collection but becomes a research project. Our team has met with the director of science at the Puerto Rican Department of Education, who has endorsed the project.
Jose Hernandez
Project Representative
This project provides an opportunity for students to see the rainforest in a dramatically new way. Despite the negative media reports about the destruction of El Yunque, students got a front row seat to the intricate ways that El Yunque is adapted to hurricane disturbance. The students surveyed which trees in the demonstration plot were knocked down and which survived. Also the students worked in protocols around decomposition of the dead trees, re-greening of the survival trees, and tracking of new stems.
Congratulations!
Catherine McCulloch
This is an interesting project. Can you say a little bit about the professional development that you provide the participating teachers? Also, you mention that "These experiences culminate with the annual Schoolyard Symposium in which students share the results of their research with fellow students and with scientists in the Luquillo Long-Term Ecological Research program." Do family and community engage in these symposia? If so, are you collecting any data about the change in their knowledge about the rainforest disturbance and resilience? Thank you!
Steven McGee
President
Thanks, Catherine. Building on Noelia's comment, we offer professional development each year for the Data Jam and separately for the field trips to the forest. Teachers come back every year as we incorporate new ideas about how to support the students. We have been gradually incorporate CODAP from the Concord Consortium as a tool for students to visualize and analyze their long-term data. Andee Rubin from TERC, who is a co-presenter, has been instrumental in our thinking of how to support teachers.
At the symposium, it is wonderful to see the pride on the faces of the parents and grandparents as their children present to scientists about the work they have done. At the symposium, we use an online survey for the attendees to provide feedback to the posters and the family members are encourage to provide feedback as well.
This is the first year that we have had research funding to study the impact of the program on student knowledge of disturbance and resilience, so stay tuned. We will hopefully be able to present results next year.
Andee Rubin
Senior Scientist
I just wanted to add a bit on the opportunities and challenges of supporting both teachers and students working with data, especially the relatively large data sets that LTERs generate. At the moment, data analysis (or data science) is not often well taught - and many teachers have limited experience doing data analysis themselves or teaching students how to find patterns in complex data or make data-based arguments. I have loved the opportunity to work on a project where the data are "local" and relevant to students' lives, but the work has also highlighted how our educational system has, in general, neglected critical data skills that students need. We're hoping that participating in Data Jam will whet teachers' and students' appetites for harnessing the power of data.
Noelia Báez Rodríguez
Education Coordinator
Hi Catherine,
Thanks for watching our video and sharing your great work! Yes, we provide PD for teachers. Our workshops focus on hydrology long-term data exploration and analysis and field work techniques and protocols on the following topics: vegetation dynamics, soil characterization and aquatic ecosystems. Yes, the families engage and often are part of the student symposium.
Noelia Báez Rodríguez
Education Coordinator
Hi Gillian,
Thanks for your nice comment! I am looking forward to learn more about your program!
Our video focus on the field works aspect of the program although, associate with the field component we offer a strong data entry and analysis component to the field effort. That way the students learned about the process of gathering data, entering data to generate graphs and data interpretations. I have to said that teachers have the magic key to extrapolate the concepts we provide to their classroom. Yes, it demands an extra effort on their parts. We provide opportunities for PD as well.
Noelia Báez Rodríguez
Education Coordinator
Hi Catherine,
Thanks for watching our video and sharing your great work! Yes, we provide PD for teachers. Our workshops focus on hydrology long-term data exploration and analysis and field work techniques and protocols on the following topics: vegetation dynamics, soil characterization and aquatic ecosystems. Yes, the families engage and often are part of the student symposium.
Jill Thompson
Hi Noelia,
The only video I viewed that showed students engaging with the science and practical activities. I know this will help them learn to understand and appreciate the forest, and how it changes. Glad the students were enjoying themselves. Well done.
Maritza Crespo
I congratulate this group of professionals who give their time to our students. Making them empathic with our nature and strengthen their commitment as good citizens.
Noelia Báez Rodríguez
Education Coordinator
Hola Maritza,
Gracias por tus lindas palabras! Y esa es la meta! Gracais a ustedes por ser parte de este equipo y por apoyarnos en todas!
Brian Drayton
It's great to see the way you & the youth are taking advantage of this remarkable opportunity to wath recovery in action — something that will be only more interesting to see as things unfold over the years (You are no doubt aware of the work at the Harvard Forest in Massachusetts, where much interesting research has been done to understand how the forest has recovered/is still recovering from the destructive hurricane of 1938). At some point, your team might want to be in touch with their team to think in parallel...
I know you can't put everything into one video but I am wondering if kids are participating in monitoring other taxa, like butterflies or birds or epiphytes?
Steven McGee
President
Thanks, Brian. Yes, Harvard is part of the LTER network. The LTER educators meet monthly to learn from each other. We have a learned quite a bit from the work that Harvard is doing.
For the field trips, we focus on three protocols: tree growth, soil/decomposition, and water. The students have access to the long-term LTER data about the other taxa. We are working on incorporating those into the Data Jam activities. In addition, students have the opportunity to model and explain the population dynamics of coqui frogs, anoles, snails, caterpillars, and mushrooms through our ElYunque.net website/curriculum.
Noelia Báez Rodríguez
Education Coordinator
Hi Brian,
Thanks so much for taking the time to watch our video! Indeed, this is a great opportunity to be able to capture the changes in the forest as it will recovered from such a dramatic event. We are oriented our effort to have our students gathering some of the vegetation and soil data from their demonstration plot established in 2009. We had long term vegetation data as baseline. We do not collected butterflies, birds or epiphytes but I do not discard that possibility. I do know the great work from the ED folks in Harvard Forest. I had the change to visited 5 years ago. It is a place I will love to get back and bring some students and perhaps start thinking of ways to do more cross site experiences.
Matt Fisher
Professor
I really like that this project has taken what many people would view as a disaster and turned it into an extended "teachable moment." I would like to learn more about the details of how the students are engaged in the research projects. What is the time frame for involvement - several days continously, one day a week, a few days a month, a couple of days each month over an extended period of time? What is the balance between time spent in the field collecting data and time spent in the "classroom" analyzing data?
Steven McGee
President
We provide flexibility for the teachers to integrate these experiences into their courses. For the data collection component that is featured in the video, the students spend one day at El Verde. They spend part of the day in the field collecting data for one of the protocols (trees, decomposition, or water) and then the second part of the day entering their data at computers in the station. The students then have access to the updated long-term dataset that includes the data they just entered.
Back in the classroom, the teachers work with the students to come up with a research question and analyze the data. With additional funding provided by this grant, we are focusing on getting a better understanding of the variability in time spent analyzing the data. The teachers who are invited to bring students to the forest are selected from the population of teachers who have successfully supported students in analyzing long-term data through previous participation in the Data Jam component of the program. The teachers can then select the best project to submit to the annual schoolyard symposium.
Alan Berkowitz
I love the hard hats and proud smiles! Such an inspiration for us.
Are the students involved in field studies on your site the same students that participate in your Data Jam program? If so, does the field work help them feel more knowledgeable about or connected to the data?
Steven McGee
President
Thanks, Alan. I hope that your LTER Data Jam is going well this year.
Yes, teachers typically do both Data Jam and the field protocols. To be invited to bring students to the station, the teachers had to have successfully completed Data Jam with their students. We have a high return rate for teachers who participate in Data Jam from one year to the next.
That is an interesting question about the connection between the field component and Data Jam. That is not a question we are examining in this research grant. However, that would be a great enhancement if we are awarded the pending DRK12 grant to do the cross-site research on the Data Jam.
M Plaza-Toledo
This is wonderful! Camila's words "nada nos vence" is epic. Thanks for sharing.
Steven McGee
Jeffrey Glogiewicz
Educational Consultant
Thank you. I agree that Camila's words are epic and worthy of remembering, particularly post María.
Peg Cagle
math teacher & math department chair
This work is doing so much more than building students' knowledge, agency and appreciation for science. It seems quite clear that it is also empowering students to take control of their own lives, no matter the challenges they face. School age students are often left feeling helpless in the wake of large-scale crises in their lives. The world seems big and they are small, This project arms them with knowledge to make sense of what is happening in their world, and providing them with ways to have a positive impact on their environment. I am curious if their is any component of the research that is specifically examining how students sense of themselves within their world, is being documented.
Steven McGee
President
Thank you for your comment Peg. You have captured nicely the rationale underlying our RAPID grant that is the focus of this video. While the Luquillo Schoolyard program has been around for quite sometime, the primary focus has been outreach activities. This grant is providing the opportunity for us to do research on the impact of the program. We are hoping to capture how participation in the various aspects of the program is providing students a deeper understanding of the resilience of the forest that can provide hope. This research has taken on more prominence with the release of recent report on the number of children in Puerto Rico that have displayed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Through assessments, surveys, and interviews we hope to provide some initial data to address the question Peg has raised about how participation in authentic science can give students a sense of agency. We are also providing students a forum for telling their own community's stories about survival and resilience (soon to be English-subtitled). I continue to be impressed with the resolve of the teachers and students to participate despite the impediments of the compromised infrastructure in Puerto Rico. Camilla's sentiment that "nothing can defeat us" is common among the students participating in the program.
Alexis Torres
Delighted to support and participate in this Schoolyard project for many years.... Resilience has been and will continue to be important in our lives... We need to continue to develop in students and teachers their analytical capabilities for the benefit of Puerto Rico's environmental and socioeconomic future.... We are grateful for NSF's support and for our collaboration opportunity with The Learning Partnership!
Alexis
Steven McGee
President
Thanks, Alexis. Our partnership with your Forward Learning organization has been invaluable for the success of the program.
Martha Merson
Hi, Your project speaks to the issues of resilience that have been on my mind lately. I think it is helpful to pay attention to all these aspects of a learning experience--competence with data, biological monitoring techniques, and the impact on a sense of agency. As you develop assessments, surveys, and interviews to show how participation in authentic science can give students a sense of agency, I hope you'll share them on informal science.org. This question has come up related to the students and early career filmmakers whose choices are being impacted by their participation in iSWOOP. To date we have done some retrospective interviewing, but not much more (happy to share those questions with you, if you like).
If you have a chance, I'll be curious to hear if you identify other synergies with the iSWOOP project.
https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/presentations/1347.html
Steven McGee
President
Thanks for your comment, Martha. As we gain success in measuring student agency, we will share those instruments on informal.org. Yes, I would love to see the interview questions that you use for your retrospective videos. It great to see how the iSWOOP project is creating avenues for communicating scientific results. That aligns to our goal with Data Jam to encourage students to be creative in how they communicate their results. Perhaps there are things we can learn from iSWOOP about how to better support students in that aspect of their projects.
Rebecca Lugo
This is a fantastic project. To me, it is a perfect example of culturally responsive teaching through a project-based learning unit. Well done!
Joan Freese
What a great project. The youth are so articulate about their learnings--it's impressive. I am a big fan of place based learning, so your approach really makes sense to me. I also think it's so important to get kids out in nature. Finally, your video is beautifully shot. Kudos all around!
Bonny Ortiz
A great video! Congratulations!
Further posting is closed as the showcase has ended.